And the Rest

* Happy 90th to Isaac Asimov. One of the greats.

* Multimillionaire visits hospital, declares American health system works just great.

* ‘How to Train the Aging Brain.’

* The world will not end in 2012. 2011.

* Notice again how far down the slippery slope we have gone. Krauthammer’s first position was that torture should be restricted solely to ticking time bomb cases in which we knew that a terror suspect could prevent an imminent detonation of a WMD. His position a few years later is that torture should be the first resort for any terror suspect who could tell us anything about future plots. Those of us who warned that torture, once admitted into the mainstream, will metastasize beyond anyone’s control now have the example of Charles Krauthammer’s arguments to back us up. More here.

* Get your sneak peak of 2020 here and here. Via i09.

Bad Advice from Alec Baldwin

Bad advice from Alec Baldwin (via Kottke, who gets this wrong too):

Now is a wonderful opportunity to show the country what Democrats/liberals/progressives/unaligned learned from the Clinton era. Whatever personal problems that public officials deal with privately, leave them alone. This could happen to anyone, in any state, regardless of party. Why make the voters of South Carolina suffer while Sanford is skewered? If he wants to resign, so be it. If not, let him deal with it in private.

Kottke goes on to criticize Huffington Post and TPM for diving so wholeheartedly into the mud on this. And he’s right—sex scandals are non-stories and should be treated as such. (Olbermann’s glee, for instance, was actively painful to watch last night.) But that doesn’t mean the Sanford story isn’t important or that the man shouldn’t resign. Though the media seems strangely uninterested in this fact, Sanford skipped town (skipped the whole country!) for a week without telling anyone where he was going, and in fact actively misled his staff about his whereabouts. There are powers that only governors can exercise; it’s wildly irresponsible for him to pull a stunt like this no matter what’s going on in his personal life, and if that’s the level of judgment he exercises when dealing with the state’s business he obviously needs to resign. Governing a state is serious business, and a serious responsibility; Sanford blew it off, and so he needs to resign or else be impeached. That’s the only aspect of this story that’s newsworthy and the only one we should be talking about, no matter how salacious the details or egregious the apparent hypocrisy.

UPDATE: But don’t take my word for it; even “Chainsaw” Charles Krauthammer says Sanford has to go.

Other Links

Other links.

* Boycott General Motors? It makes perfect sense if the only thing you care about is embarrassing President Obama.

* Krauthammer: “What Fox did is not just create a venue for alternative opinion. It created an alternate reality.” At least he admits it…

* Republicans have asked for 610 days to prepare for the Sotomayor Supreme Court hearing. What could be more reasonable than that?

* Futurama renewed. Saved by the Bell reunion draws one step closer. Shia LaBeouf will not ruin Y: The Last Man.

* Meme of the day: 30 Rock vs. The Muppet Show.

* And what is destiny?, from Very Small Array.

Charles Krauthammer Throws in the Towel

Charles Krauthammer throws in the towel.

Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. famously said of Franklin Roosevelt that he had a “second-class intellect, but a first-class temperament.” Obama has shown that he is a man of limited experience, questionable convictions, deeply troubling associations (Jeremiah Wright, William Ayers, Tony Rezko) and an alarming lack of self-definition — do you really know who he is and what he believes? Nonetheless, he’s got both a first-class intellect and a first-class temperament. That will likely be enough to make him president.

I’ll take it. See you in eight years, Chuck.